Conventional heat-integration between adjacent columns, as well as thermal coupling and the equipment-integrated implementation in a dividing wall column are successful concepts for the improvement of the energy efficiency of distillation processes. While especially dividing wall columns have made a considerable impact in industrial application, further heat integration is prevented by the bidirectional transfer of liquid and vapor streams that impede a necessary pressure variation for modification of the boiling temperatures. This limitation can however be overcome by the modification of thermal couplings to one-directed liquid only transfer. While this concept has been proposed almost 20 years ago, it has received limited attention so far. In order to evaluate the prospect of this combination, the current article exploits a combination of a shortcut-based screening and a rigorous economic optimization, in order to evaluate a heat-integrated side-rectifier with liquid only transfer modification in comparison with a range of alternative options. The application to an exemplary case study highlights the huge potential of this combination, showcasing the possibility to save half of the energy required for a non-integrated configuration and even more than 30% compared to fully thermally coupled configurations, depending on the feed composition.

With an expected future increase of costs for carbon emissions the logistics industry is targeting to design sustainable warehouses to reduce their carbon footprints. To do so, it is required that every aspect of a warehouse from its general design to the transport processes and technologies must be assessed in terms of its carbon footprint. In this article the carbon footprint, which can be traced back to the storage technology employed within a storage area is analysed. The approach includes surface, material, and technology-related data to calculate the carbon footprint of a logistics concept. Firstly, different dimensions of storage technology carbon footprints are identified. A comprehensive model is provided to calculate the carbon footprint of alternative storage technologies in a warehouse. The model is applied in a case study with actual data from a warehouse planning project in the German production industry comparing three alternative storage technologies for a small part storage solution. The author’s find highest carbon footprint in the application of an autonomous guided vehicle shelving system compared to automatic storage and retrieval system and manual storage solution using Kanban racks.

Provision of grid services in modern power systems is highly dependent on their automation systems for monitoring, communication and decision making. These automation systems are vital for the reliable operation of the grid during and after disruptive events. This papers explores the concept of Grid Function Virtualization (GFV) as a potential approach to enhance the operational flexibility of grid automation systems. To this end, a review on applications of virtualization in related domains including smart grids is presented. Furthermore, the GFV architecture along with its building blocks is discussed. The benefits of the proposed GFV concept in dealing with power system disruptions is then demonstrated via real time simulations with an ICT-enriched CIGRE MV benchmark grid.

The current trend to shortening product lifecycles and the uncertainty in the dynamics of global markets force companies to increase flexibility in supply chain management. In spite of the importance of the interdependencies between product design and supply chains, the contribution of product design principles to supply chain management flexibility has not been, so far, sufficiently investigated in the scientific literature. This research will show the positive benefits of combining postponement and component commonality in the automotive industry. Insights from literature and a case study are combined to evaluated the impacts on the supply chain variables coordination, collaboration and configuration and its flexibility. The notion of this work is to convince companies in making combined component commonality and postponement decisions rather than separate ones.

Transformation und Digitalisierung stehen als Leitbegriffe im Zentrum der aktuellen Fachdiskussion in der gewerblich-technischen Berufsbildung. Sie beschreiben wesentliche Eckpunkte, mit denen die aktuellen Herausforderungen und Entwicklungen von Akteuren in der Berufsbildung, beteiligten Institutionen und gewerblich-technischen Wissenschaften wahrgenommen werden. Die Herausgeber verfolgen mit dieser Publikation das Ziel, die Fachdiskussionen in der gewerblich-technischen Berufsbildung zu bereichern und zukünftige Entwicklungen anzuregen. Der Band soll Orientierungspunkte für die berufliche Bildungspraxis ebenso aufzeigen wie Impulse für Sozialpartner, Berufsbildungspolitik sowie gewerblich-technische Wissenschaften und ihre Didaktiken.

This paper proposes a two-stage network processor for the supervisory control of multi-terminal HVDC grid that connects different AC areas. The proposed network processor processes the DC substation topology locally in the first stage and analyzes the HVDC grid connectivity at the supervisory controller. The processor uses the k-means clustering method to detect the islands in HVDC grid and prepares required information to carry out the converter control mode assignation. The performance of the method has been tested for an islading scenario in a 7-terminal HVDC grid using a real-time co-simulation platform. The output of network processor helps the control application at the supervisory level to make decisions based on the control modes of the available converters in the islands. This two-stage architecture has been compared with the centralized architecture in terms of computational complexity.